A blog on crisis communications best practices, emergency information and social media in emergency management ... an open forum for exchanging ideas and experience on emergency info and SMEM..
THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED WITHIN ARE MINE AND DO NOT REPRESENT OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT POLICY OR THE VIEWS OF MY EMPLOYER.

Monday, December 27, 2010

New entry in our online project to advance crisis and emergency comms

Amazingly, i'm still finding time to work on my online project with my colleague Barry Radford.
It's for an online community called PTSC-Online and our work can be found in the forums section.

This one is on the growing importance of monitoring social media during emergencies. For emergency managers and BCP professionals but also for traditional media.

Here's an excerpt. Hopefully that will stimulate some conversations!

Because both the public and traditional media outlets now turn to social media during a disaster, Barry and I would even go so far as to say that the news release as the main emergency information tool is now almost irrelevant. If you can tweet, post Facebooik updates, blog, offer video feeds, audio and video clip and present a truly multimedia offering on your website, why would you need a release?

The social media platforms will drive people to your website as well as serve as key emergency and crisis communications tools by themselves.

The news release is dead ... especially if you have to wait two or three hours for approvals before you can send it out ... the world in online and mobile ... if your crisis communications planning does not take this into account ...you will fail.

Therefore, two questions come to mind.

Are your web people available to you on a 24/7 basis and do they have the capability and authority to post critical emergency information for your residents or customers?

Does your organization have the policies in place to make the above happen?

If the answer to both questions is no, then you will fail in this brave new world.